Conventional TV bulbs include a panel member having a viewing portion with a depending skirt portion about the periphery thereof, and a funnel member having a narrow neck portion communicating with a yoke portion which expands outwardly into an open wide mouth portion. The skirt portion of the panel member and the wide mouth portion of the funnel member are provided with mating sealing surfaces which are ultimately sealed together in forming a TV bulb. In order to impart necessary strength to the bulb when evacuated to form a TV tube, both the walls of the skirt portion and the walls of the funnel member between the yoke portion and wide mouth portion are relatively heavy to not only provide such necessary strength and rigidity to the evacuated tube, but also to provide adequate seal area between the panel and the funnel.
When pressing glass articles, such as TV funnels, the amount of glass required is directly proportional to the thickness of the walls employed. Further, production rates are inversely proportional to the thickness of the pressed article in view of the fact that sufficient heat must be removed from each newly pressed article so that such article retains its structural rigidity when removed from the mold. Accordingly, the thicker the wall portions of the article pressed, the greater the amount of time required in order to extract the necessary amount of heat from the article so that it will become rigid and not detrimentally deform upon removal from the mold.